• Restructured compensation to stress the team approach to serving clients and to tie rewards to how well clients do in the long run-"eliminating the me-first attitude that can damage relationship-building," she says.

• Stepped up the pace of innovation, one example being the use of a sophisticated voice recognition system, originally developed for the military, to eliminate security concerns affecting client phone conversations

• Increased assets under management by $28 billion last year, a rare uptick among private banks

12. Colleen JohnstonGroup Head, Finance, And CFO, Td Bank Group

• Oversees the finance team for the sixth largest banking company in North America and the second largest in Canada

• Recognized as Canada's CFO of the Year in 2012 by Financial Executives International Canada, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Robert Half International

• Past chair of the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario, and continues to serve on both its national and Ontario boards

13. Patricia CallahanChief Administrative Officer, Wells Fargo

• Leads a team of 2,300 people responsible for human resources, corporate communications, social responsibility, marketing and government relations (the last two added with her new title in January 2011)

• Is working to change approach to reputation management, in part by having the major reputation drivers-the five business areas she now oversees-increasingly work as a team, share research and step up media and government outreach

• Ensured the massive Wachovia merger got done on time and under budget, having led the Office of Transition from October 2008 through the end of the integration in February 2012

• Instrumental in creating company's social responsibility group, which includes philanthropy, community development, supplier diversity, stakeholder engagement, environmental affairs, diversity and inclusion, and presented the business case for it to Chairman and CEO John Stumpf prior to the Wachovia merger; also instrumental in working with the board to create its new corporate responsibility committee

• Accelerated growth in the number of consumer checking households, from a 3% annual increase in 2009 to more than an 11% increase in 2011, by launching Asterisk Free Checking

• Increased cross-sell for eight consecutive quarters: 76% of retail customers and 31% of business customers have four or more products

• Contributed to the decision to continue free debit card usage and worked with MasterCard to offer all customers platinum cards, making Huntington the first in the country to do so

• Board member of the Consumer Bankers Association for 10 years and immediate past chair

15. Cathleen "Cathy" NashPresident And CEO, Citizens Republic Bancorp

• Overcame the economically depressed climate in Michigan's industrial towns and returned Flint-based Citizens to profitability in the second quarter of last year, a quarter ahead of stated expectations, after 12 quarterly losses

• Executed plan to move $926 million of stressed assets off its balance sheet in just six months

• Led a risky, but successful, reverse stock split in July 2011 to improve Citizens' share price and avoid being delisted; saw stock jump 85% in 2011 compared with a 25% drop in the KBW Bank Index

• Achieved major milestone with Citizens' April release from a regulatory order that had been in effect since July 2010, freeing her up to explore the possibility of a sale; reached merger agreement in September with Ohio-based FirstMerit and will step aside following integration efforts.

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